We Print the Truth.

When I was a youth I read a lot of science fiction short stories, and fantasy too, some dating back to the earliest days of the genres. One of my all-time favorite stories is Anthony Boucher's novella "We Print the Truth," published in 1944.

It has an absolutely terrific setup and really works the premise out well. In the story, John McVeagh, the editor of a small city paper, is granted one wish -- and his wish is that his newspaper live up to its proud and lofty slogan, "We Print the Truth." Back in those days, children, newspapers really prided themselves for genuine (not pretend) objectivity, desiring to actually tell the public the facts. Our hero's wish reflects well on his character and dedication.

That's how the trouble starts. 

He envisions the wish being a preventive against the paper printing anything false, but it doesn't work out that way. When a 77-year-old resident passes away, a typo in the obituary lists the man's age as 17. Thus, the coroner and McVeagh are shocked to find in the casket the body of a teenager. 

As he begin to realize what this magic power means for the paper, McVeagh decides to change the world. He goes for broke and runs a story that World War II is over! The Allies have won! And the whole town reads the news with great joy.

Except the war is not over. Everyone within the paper's circulation district believes the war is over, but it's true nowhere else. When the FBI sends a man to find out why the factory has stopped fulfilling munitions orders and the draft board stopped sending men, he too believes the war is over when he enters the town. All over the world, however, the war continues. 

And that's just one crazy issue caused by the power of this particular press. 

I've given away enough of the plot; you can read the story at the Internet Archive. Just look for the collection of Boucher stories entitled The Compleat Werewolf, and Other Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It's worth the time. 

I guess I was thinking of it because, while few journalists really seem to care about the truth today, they sure want to change the world. But, as with McVeagh, they really have far less power over the world than they think, even if they're willing to run the truth into the ground and spit on it to make it what they want. Of late we've been given a very good look at what they mean by "truth," and whatever they mean by it, it sure isn't true. 

The one thing that gave them legitimacy, honesty, is the currency they paid for power, and now they find themselves with much less of both. 

P.S.: My favorite science fiction short story is “Happy Ending“ by Henry Kuttner, if you’re curious. There are spoilers, so don’t look for plot summaries.

Sharks, sharps, flats.

We played a lot of card games in my house when I was growing up, and if someone were to have a particularly good run my mother might call him a card shark. Interesting to note that was kind of a misnomer, except it wasn't. 

The term card shark is well-known, and was the name of a popular game show, but it doesn't make much sense. While the term shark is used for someone very driven at work (especially lawyers), we don't usually append the term shark to an activity to show someone is good at it. A good cook is not a kitchen shark; a great writer is not a word shark. But a pool shark is someone really good at pool, and for the same reason as the card shark -- it comes from cheating.  

We're gonna need a bigger pot.

In centuries past, sharks were not considered the magnificent beasts that the aquariums tell us they are now, but rather were considered parasites, ones that fed on others, as with loan sharks. So we might think that a card shark is either a mighty beast or a parasite that lives on smaller prey, but that may not be how the term originated. 

The word sharper as a noun likely came to the English language from the German schärfen, for sharpen, a way of calling someone a cheater, at least according to Grammarist. I suspect it may come from cheaters doctoring card decks by trimming or notching particular cards in a subtle way so they could tell what their opponents were holding. Oddly, I haven't seen that possible explanation online, but we know that deck doctoring is why new cards come in sealed boxes -- to avoid such tricks. 

Over time the card sharp, a kind of odd phrase, seems to have accidentally become card shark. But while the card sharp may be a cheat, a card shark is more often someone who's just really good at card games. (Different dictionaries, however, will define the terms differently.) It has been my experience in the real world that calling someone a card sharp is an accusation of cheating, but calling him a card shark is not. Whether the player is a card sharp or shark, though, he's not someone you want to go up against. Or at least, you'd best be a master at either method of play to go against him. 

Personally, that's why gambling has been the one vice that's had limited attraction for me -- there is no limit to the amount you can lose, and in a short time. What fun is that? I work too hard for my dough.

Auto lies.

Lies and Implied Lies I Have Told My Wife After Using Her Car

(Or Have I?)

The frangipane light came on.

I let the dog drive.

It's okay if not all four tires are completely round, right?

Pity I couldn't find the insurance card. That cop was getting sore.

I turned all the mirrors upside down, so now their reflection is upside down. 

The dog was smoking in the backseat but I told him to cut it out. 

First of all, let me say it wasn't all that long a walk home. 

People don't understand how hard it is to tell the oil cap from the wiper fluid cap.

I got the tires potated.

That AAA took forever to send someone.

I got that special gas out of the green-handled pump for you. It's more expensive, so I'm sure it's better.

I told the police officer I was you, identifying as male.

Really cool special effect, where smoke comes out of the vent when Metallica comes on.

I promise I will stop lying about the car.

Easy childing, hard adulting.

I hear them young whippersnappers complain about the problems of adulting, how they should have been taught to do their taxes and change tires in school instead of learning algebra or cartography. 

I'm actually not going to come down on them too hard. I know they're being flippant, and we all know that the reason we learn a little about a lot of subjects in school is because we have to find the kids who like algebra and cartography and all the other subjects that will not be so useful for the rest of us later on, because someone has to know how to do these things. Also, learning a lot of things in a stressful environment is a great way to learn how to learn, and it's good exercise for the mind. Still, it would be helpful if kids got more practical life lessons in school -- or at home.

And there's the rub. There are strong disadvantages for kids who are not required to do things at home. In the suburban area where I live, no kids are ever seen pushing lawnmowers, regardless of the income level at which they live. Dad rides the mower or they leave it to the pros. I never see kids raking leaves or painting the house or any of the things I used to do with my dad that I hated. 

Further, there are not that many jobs for youngsters, and probably fewer youngsters who would want to do them anyway. Why should they? To save for college? To work all summer and pile up a pittance that won't even pay for three credits in the way-overpriced universities of the present day?

The real loss shows later down the road, in the failure to go through all those miserable jobs and learn how to "adult." 

Do not think that I'm saying kids have it too easy. Actually, in a lot of very crucial ways, they have it worse now. They may have greater material goods than generations past, but they are much less likely to be raised in a solid home with some kind of moral and spiritual foundation. That makes them more susceptible to all kinds of social ills, especially nihilism. 

I get on the anti-nihilism soapbox a lot. It's the main reason we have not vanquished so many other of those social ills. If nothing matters, why do anything? Why achieve anything, except for the most base, egomaniacal reasons? If nothing matters, who cares what you do? Why, really, does it matter if I hurt someone if I want to? Nothing matters means exactly what it says. 

And this too is a product of "bad childing." Kids shielded from all kinds of tough truths become teenagers who are shocked and dismayed to discover the facts of life. They realize they have literally been lied to by everyone about everything -- not just about the Tooth Fairy! They were lied to about how perfect and special they were! (Everyone is special and unique -- only not in the ways egotism tells us. That's a hard concept to grasp when you are thirteen. Or maybe even thirty.) 

It becomes a race to the bottom -- the kids need to eject any hopeful or meaningful ideals before those too are exposed as lies. Nihilism feels true because they now expect the worst. It's a protection against further disappointment. Nihilism is also enticing because promises it freedom and pokes fun at everything. If nothing matters, you can do whatever you want! But in the end, the menu is always the same. 

 

So put them to work around the house. Encourage them to find jobs. Tell them they must commit to extracurriculars, and not bail out when the going gets tough. Establish rules. You can't "give them a sense of pride," pace Whitney Houston, but you can help them earn it. If there's the slightest glimmer of faith in the parents, they should commit to some kind of churchgoing. And by all means, protect the kids from not from the knowledge of harsh realities but from being the victim of harsh realities. 

Coaches say things like "Easy training, hard game. Hard training, easy game." The truth of that is simple to grasp. Well, childhood needs to be a training ground for adulthood, and it does kids no favors to treat it any other way. 

And then Einstein told me...

I've mentioned before that the most frustrating part of fact-checking work -- real fact-checking, not rubberstamping opinion, as the Washington Post does -- is checking quotations. Writers cull quotations from exceptionally unreliable sites like BrainyQuote all the time. They don't even care if the quote is true. What matters is that it illustrates the writer's own point and sounds like it comes from someone much brighter than the writer or the reader. 

That second bit is where the real trouble starts. For example, say I was writing an article on the modern view of religion, a topic for which one might expect a learned readership largely immune to boredom. And say I want to use an interesting quote from Charles Peirce, founder of Pragmatism, who noted that "a pseudo-evolutionism which enthrones mechanical law above the principle of growth, is at once scientifically unsatisfactory, as giving no possible hint of how the universe has come about, and hostile to all hopes of personal relations to God." Well, most readers, even those who read The New Yorker (maybe especially them, these days), would have no idea who Charles Peirce was, and so the impact of the quote would be diminished, even by taking the time to explain Peirce and his connection to the topic. 

BUT! I attribute his thoughts to Einstein, and everyone smiles and goes on his merry way, both educated and miseducated at a stroke.

Poor Einstein is a particular case. He's misquoted more than anyone else I know, more than Churchill, Lincoln, Hemingway, Warren Buffett, and Oprah combined. Here are some quotes commonly attributed to the late professor that he did not say, according to our friend at Quote Investigator: 

"Any Fool Can Know. The Point Is to Understand."

"The Search for Truth Is More Precious Than Its Possession."

"Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results."

NOT EINSTEIN!

I bring this up because a month or so ago I was asked to fact-check a series of health-related articles that turned out to be very easy. The information was all pretty well documented and not controversial. I spent far more time sourcing and mostly disproving quotations the author had inserted. It was not even why they asked me to do the job, I'm sure, but it turned out to be the most expensive part -- for them. I got paid by the hour.

Since people refuse to consult Bartlett's Familiar Quotations or the Oxford one or even The Ultimate Quotable Einstein before they throw around quotations, I decided: That's it. I quit. I too am going to make up quotes and slap them on Albert Einstein, or as his personal friends like me called him, Cheech. Here's an anecdote with a 100% fake quote:

One day I said to Einstein, "Cheech, that chick in Accounts Payable is a knockout. I've got to get her number."

The great professor looked me in the eyes sadly. He put his hands on my shoulders, and said, "I musht tell you a piece of advice I got from mine own grandfather. He vuss a genius, maybe schmarter than me. You vould do vell to listen to him, ja?"

"What was it?"

"I had a shimilar problem vhen I vuss young like you unt asked him vhat to do. He said to me, very solemnly, 'Al, Tauchen Sie Ihren Stift nicht in das Tintenfass des Unternehmens.'"

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"Don't dip your pen in the company inkvell."   

Feel free to use the story, pass it around, put it in your doctoral thesis, whatever. Scientific papers are loaded with junk citations now. No one cares anymore! Everyone is happier with lies, so why be different?

Walmart lies.

Just for the record, Walmart totally lied to me and knew they were lying and did it anyway. 

One day I went into the store, as one does, and forgot to bring my reusable bags. The People's Republic of New York has outlawed the complementary plastic bags that have been used for forty-odd years, but grocery stores all have paper bags that the consumer can buy for a nickel. That's the law, and they all comply. 

Except that this time, with a cart full of Walmart crap, I pulled up to the checkout to find that the paper bags were no longer available. I had forgotten my stupid and probably germ-laden reusables, but figured I could blow forty cents like a Rockefeller on paper bags. But no -- no paper bags anymore. 

I guess I could have just taken everything out of the store loose, but that would be hard to deal with in the car, and that's if the Greeter Patrol didn't stop me because it looked like I hadn't checked out. This is not some lawless horror show like Portland or Chicago, where one just takes what one wants and leaves. So I bought some more stupid reusable bags. 

When I got home, I wrote to Walmart, asking what was up with no paper bags. Sadly, I did not retain the conversation, but the poor schlub (probably on the other side of the world) explained to me that this was Walmart's latest effort to save the environment in which we live, by doing away with paper bags. 

Uh-huh. Okay. I thanked the person with the phony name and said I knew he/she/it was lying, but had to repeat the company line. 

Proof came a couple of months later, when I was in Pennsylvania, and stopped into get a couple of things from their Walmart. And what was at all the checkouts? 

Plastic bags. 

So clearly, Walmart -- a company that sells more cheap and easily broken plastic garbage than any other on Earth -- doesn't give a damn about the sainted environment. (I know, you're heading for the fainting couch as you read those words.) 

I still don't know why the New York Walmart decided to make life even more annoying for its customers than the law requires. I doubt they think that New York's environment must be preserved but Pennsylvania's can go to hell. But, yeah, Walmart lies, just like every other damn institution these days. You literally cannot trust any institution to tell the truth about the slightest thing. 

Shame on you, Walmart. You can't even be honest when it would cost you nothing. I shall be making a greater effort to avoid Sam Walton's misbegotten beast in the future.

Career moves, career schmoves.

Years ago I worked for a big-name magazine, located in Midtown Manhattan. You'd know the name; it was on every supermarket checkout line in America. And no, it was not one of those cheapass publications that followed celebrity tan lines or the adventures of Bat Boy. This one had been around for 100 years and was rock-solid as well as famous.

Not this one either. I'm not that old.

It was a good job in a fun workplace with great people and a sense of camaraderie. 

I wanted out. 

The problem was, the head company had no interest in developing talent within. This I base not only on my own experience, but also on that of coworkers. You were what you were and you might get ahead if you were brilliant and devoted to the job around the clock. That's how my boss got her spot. But me, I would probably be in the exact same job for life. 

So, I drove to Secaucus and interviewed at a trade magazine that covered the adventures of floor products. I totally nailed it down, as they say in the floor business.

I didn't get the job.

I've thought about this from time to time over the years, and I keep coming back to a strange conclusion. You see, I was at the top of my copy game in those days, and my résumé was excellent. I was as close to being fit and still had most of my hair, and looked good in a suit. I think they were impressed by me at the interview, during which I met multiple staff members. But there was one sticking point.

They could not get past the idea that I would leave a prestigious consumer magazine to work for a small trade magazine. 

I tried to impress upon them that this was an opportunity with a company that had a rep for training and promoting from within. Further, as a guy, I was about as interested in the content of that consumer mag as I was in floor products anyway. And further yet, I would be trading a frustrating New York City commute for a much faster (if still frustrating) drive to work. That last point I didn't play up, but it was certainly part of the appeal.

Ultimately I think I didn't get the job because they didn't believe me. They may have thought I was about to lose my job at the consumer magazine, or maybe I was clubhouse poison and on my last leg there. Why else leave work at a famous magazine to go into the trades? (Never mind that the trade job paid at least as well....)

Just one of those weird lessons in life. I'm pretty honest, and like a fool I expect people to believe me. But sometimes they don't, because sometimes the truth makes no sense to them. 

By the way, don't look on the supermarket checkout and wonder which magazine I worked for. The Internet and bad management killed it dead a few years later. Not sure if the floor products magazine is still around under a different name, but I wouldn't be surprised in the least. 

Lies, damned lies, and TV shows.

I feel like I can't trust anything I saw on TV growing up. Yes, I am really bright that way, just tumbling to the fact. But it's worse than that, because not only were TV dramas lying about life then, but they continue to do so today. 

Some of this I knew. Like, I knew that being knocked out, which happened to TV detectives about every other week, is a serious medical situation. Concussions are dangerous. And then I got one, which reinforced what I had read. Everyone kept asking if I had blacked out, because that's even more serious. If I had been a TV hero, I would have shaken my head, rubbed the spot, asked if someone'd got the number of that crosstown bus, and got back in the game. Instead, I was so dizzy I could barely move for hours, and it took me weeks to stop spinning entirely. I still sometimes feel the effects, three years later. 

And I'd read many times that there is no such thing as the little silencer that screws onto the end of a pistol and turns the loud BANG!! into a little pew! In reality they reduce the noise and flash somewhat, but that's because gunshots are really loud, so any reduction is helpful. There is a famous essay by mystery writer John Dickson Carr, "The Grandest Game in the World," that goes into some of the myths that are perpetuated to this day, including this one.

Arthur B. Reeve, who began in an earlier era – as, indeed, did most of the lady waltzers – entered the 20s with his once immense popularity fading away. Nevertheless his tales of Craig Kennedy had been read by hundreds of thousands, praised by Theodore Roosevelt, and turned into early film serials which held us petrified.

     Craig Kennedy was Professor Kennedy of, presumably, Columbia University. Like Dr. Thorndyke, he was the scientific detective. His laboratory flashed with stranger sparks, and bubbled with more weird beakers and test tubes, than the laboratory of the late Dr. Frankenstein. For each occasion he had some new gadget, guaranteed sensational, to clap on somebody’s wrist or wire underneath the chair. Square-jawed Kennedy in his high collar, whom we remember so well from the illustrations in the Harper editions, has marched into limbo with all his gadgets loaded on him. Much of his scientific knowledge, I believe, has been discredited. Nobody reads about him now. And yet…

     He was first in the field of fiction with the lie detector, with murder by electrolysis, with radium poisoning, with death from liquid air. He taught writers the use of the Maxim silencer, and neither tears nor prayers nor curses can induce them to give it up. As a final achievement among many, in a story called “The Dream Detective” and later in a novel called The Soul Scar, it was he who introduced the profession to psychoanalysis.

The Maxim silencer was a real thing, but I suppose Reeves used it the way we see in TV detective shows, as something that enables a gun to be fired in a bathroom at a volume that would barely disturb someone taking a shower. 

Now I read that an all-time crime show classic, the fast forensic ballistics examination, cannot with accuracy pinpoint the gun that fired the fatal bullet. As posted on Books, Bikes, Boomsticks, "'ballistic fingerprinting', like many other forensic techniques, relies on pattern matching and is highly subjective, despite being presented to juries as 'science'." Proprietor Tam posts reports on the much-lower-than-depicted accuracy of ballistics matching, noting "Jurors have watched plenty of police procedurals on TV and think that projectile matching is some precise science when in fact going much beyond 'Well, the octagonal polygonal rifling tells me this .45 caliber bullet was likely fired from a Glock' is educated guesswork."

Even so-called realistic crime shows like Law & Order have never been shy about the forensics expert saying things like, "That's the gun that fired the shot, no question about it." In truth, even if the gun was found still hot at the same scene as the shooting, there might still be some question about it. 

"Ballistics proved that's the gun that killed him, Your Honor!"

I might almost suspect that the FBI likes people to believe that guns can be matched to bullets this way to make us think it's more difficult to get away with murder than we might hope.

Things like that lead to what is called the CSI effect, after the TV show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and its spinoffs. It's a somewhat disputed idea that jurors will be reluctant to convict absent powerful forensic evidence, right down to the man in the lab coat on the stand showing matching fingerprints and bullet casings and DNA samples on a projector. Whether this is a real phenomenon, and I suppose it might be to some extent, the blame can be placed not only on shows like CSI, Quincy, Bones, and Criminal Minds, but even real-life shows like Forensics Files. Sometimes crimes are solved by scientifically derived evidence, but more often by plain old detective work, and idiots found red-handed with the goods, or who break under endless hours of yakking down at HQ.

Another famous essay in the crime fiction genre is Dashiel Hammett's "24 Rules for Detective Writers," which certainly gets its heft from Hammett's personal experience as a real detective. Rules that have to do with guns are as follows: 

1. There was an automatic revolver, the Webley-Fosbery, made in England some years ago. The ordinary automatic pistol, however, is not a revolver. A pistol, to be a revolver, must have something on it that revolves.

2. The Colt’s .45 automatic pistol has no chambers. The cartridges are put in a magazine.

3. A silencer may be attached to a revolver, but the effect will be altogether negligible. I have never seen a silencer used on an automatic pistol, but am told it would still make quite a bit of noise. “Silencer” is a rather optimistic name for this device which has generally fallen into disuse.

4. When a bullet from a Colt’s .45, or any firearm of approximately the same size and power, hits you, even if not in a fatal spot, it usually knocks you over. It is quite upsetting at any reasonable range.

5. A shot or stab wound is simply felt as a blow or push at first. It is some little time before any burning or other painful sensation begins.

10. It is impossible to see anything by the flash of an ordinary gun, though it is easy to imagine you have seen things.

22.When an automatic pistol is fired the empty cartridge shell flies out the right-hand side. The empty cartridge case remains in a revolver until ejected by hand.

So there are a lot of things that crime writers, especially ones on TV shows, ought to know that have been known for a long time. 

The one Hammett rule that I can vouch for, growing up in New York, is rule #18: "'Youse' is the plural of 'you.'" Youse can take that one to the bank.

The truth is out there.

 

Medical update: Duh.

There was a headline in Medscape on March 11 that made me want to reach in through the Internet and do some serious Moe slappin': 

Year of COVID: Everything We Thought We Knew Was Wrong

Well. How about that. I wonder if what they thought they knew was wrong is what the rest of us have come to know they were wrong about. Let's have a look at some quotes from the piece. 

[Michael Osterholm, PhD, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota] says mixed messages may have cost the US in terms of public support.

"I think it is a really unfortunate situation because we burned a lot of bridges in terms of people wanting to follow or support public health measures," Osterholm says.

Oh, do you think so? 

In a scientific brief published in March 2020, the WHO cautioned that there was no evidence that the virus was lingering in air and making people sick, though recent experiments suggested that it might be doing just that.

Scientists who study aerosols were dumbfounded.

In a strongly worded letter to the journal Science, Kimberly Prather, PhD, a professor and atmospheric chemist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sought to clear the fog. "There is overwhelming evidence that inhalation…represents a major transmission route for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)" she wrote.

According to this piece, the World Health Organization made an awful lot of errors. Totally innocent, of course. I wonder if anyone had an idea that the WHO could not be trusted? I seem to recall one fellow, orange complexion, kind of loud... but everyone says he was talking through his hat. Also. China comes in for no blame in this piece, despite its well-known lies and coverups about the whole thing, abetted by its flunkies at the WHO. So where does the blame lie? Well, there's an optimistic quote from a certain White House figure that's framed to make it look like he is a moron:

The same day the WHO declared a pandemic, then-President Donald Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office. "The virus will not have a chance against us," he said, "No nation is more prepared or more resilient than the United States."

Today, of course, the US leads the world in COVID-19 cases and deaths.

ISWYDT. 

We shall see in this article that our public medical friends only made innocent mistakes out of unfortunate ignorance and the interference of politicians. And aren't they oh so trusting in those Chinese death figures? 

But let's go on.

Much of the public health guidance given to the public last year turned out to be incorrect.

"Putting aside rampant disinformation and political interference, the real tragedy was not having any COVID-19 testing for the first 2 months of the US pandemic, which promoted diffuse spread of the virus across the country, and we've never been able to contain it since," said Eric Topol, MD, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research and editor-in-chief of Medscape.

"That was the unforgivable mistake…a fatal mistake for thousands of Americans," Topol said.

I seem to recall there was COVID-19 testing available, although its failure to be widespread had more to do with the "this is just the flu, don't worry" out of these public health poohbahs than any "political interference." It's nice to blame someone else, isn't it, especially for your "unforgiveable mistake"?

Notice that the "rampant disinformation" isn't pegged to anyone. We're left to think it came from the White House rather than a certain nation that starts with a C and ends with an A and isn't Cambodia. You know, the one that was locking up doctors?

Of course, it wasn't all bad.  The development of the vaccines, which happened with unprecedented speed, was a dazzling achievement.

"It's astounding, you know, and it's a testament to the scientific community, the medical community, the regulatory community, the pharmaceutical industry, you know the fact that everybody was able to do this," on such an accelerated timeline and without compromising safety, "was a very happy surprise," Heise says.

Now everyone is hoping we can get them rolled out in time.

Didn't that orange guy whom everyone hates have some role to play in getting the vaccines out before year's end, when everyone was saying it was impossible? Sounds vaguely familiar....

"I think it's just a reminder that we have to be very humble when we deal with these viruses. We have, have, to be humble," said Osterholm.

Some experts worry we will pay a price for these missteps now.

As he has watched the new coronavirus variants emerge, he says he's realized we're in a whole new ballgame with COVID now.

"I always give people a disclosure when I talk about these viruses now, that you know, I know less about them now than I probably did 6 months ago. And I think that type of open mind is what's going to help get us through here and envision what the future might look like and what we have to plan for," Osterholm said.

Oh, don't worry about it at all. We know everything from now on will be really, truly on the level. Even though you all told us that it was okay to go out and parade around for social justice when you wouldn't let people leave their apartments, and even though public health officials in states like mine signed off on sending sick people to nursing homes, we know you're all about duty and humanity. 

Sure, we the public will trust you. Just as much as you trust us. 

Humanity: Too stupid or what?

On the job!

I was going through a text for an updating project, and was saddened to read a section about how epidemics of the future will be handled. I'd love to quote it, but it would cost me my client (NDA, don't you know). However, the gist is, or was, back in those more optimistic times not so long ago, that medical professionals had learned from studying pandemics, and we the public could be assured that if a contagious outbreak were to arise, plans were in place to contain it quickly and protect the populace. 

Uh-huh.

So, as we've learned over the last year and change, this statement is true... except for a few little tiny exceptions. Like:

🦠If the nation where the disease starts doesn't want it known, it can cover up, arrest journalists and scientists, keep everyone in the dark while sending infected citizens far and wide, and never pay a price for its wickedness. 

🦠If the United States pays ten times more toward the World Health Organization than (let's pick a random example) China, but China gives lots of nice things to the WHO officers, then the U.S. is the world's worst nation and China is not to blame for anything. More important to fund the officers than the office.

🦠If medical health professionals really hate the president, then they can contradict everything he says, even if he got the information from them, and they will never be held accountable.

🦠Public health professionals will do anything to help the public, anything at all, as long as it doesn't have a chance of adversely affecting their careers.

🦠Public health professionals think that rioting and looting is less of a danger than a worldwide pandemic, in fact they think it's good, mainly because they don't live anywhere near the rioting and looting. And because they seem to think racism killed more than half a million Americans last year.

🦠Public health officials will go along with any program, even one like putting sick people in nursing homes, which a high school biology student wouldn't do, if they think they can get away with it, and especially if it means being able to refuse help from the president that they really hate, who sends hospital ships and things. 

🦠Politics is much more important than actual lives. Lives are temporary, but politics is forever.

🦠A lot of American governors really like ordering people around. "Emergency powers" is like having the One Ring.

🦠Leftism is the enemy of everything, right up to and including the distribution of vaccines. 

🦠Thank God Almighty this Chinese Death Virus is only a fraction as dangerous as the Spanish Flu, because if we had the 1918 flu in 2020, the nation would have been completely destroyed in order to save it. 

End the recycling madness.

I keep going on about this, not because it's a waste of tax money -- God knows there are plenty and more wasteful projects -- but because it is a Big Lie and we're all complicit in it. Recycling garbage is a waste and should be stopped immediately. 

Why am I on this soapbox once again? After all, my investigative reporting revealed that not one single house in the neighborhood was compliant with the government mandated recycling program, and clearly the supply is contaminated. Well, last week I lurched out of the house on recycling day with my paper, glass, and plastic trash just as the truck came down the block. I stood there as the gentleman with the truck threw my stuff inside, then mashed it down, as such trucks do. And I'm telling you, that truck was just as disgusting as any truck in the fleet. Not only was there no difference between this "recycling" truck and a garbage truck, but it's the same truck. The business that contracts with our town for waste removal isn't even pretending to recycle anything anymore; why should we?

It started small in New York, with a five-cent deposit on soda bottles in the early 80's. This annoyed a lot of people, but others were glad that it got a bunch of broken glass off the street. By the end of the decade we were sorting things into bags for pickup. The Solid Waste Management Act of 1988 required municipalities to recycle various post-consumer materials. And now, because there's no market for the crap, it's all going into landfills. But the state loves it, because every deposit bottle that isn't redeemed is a nickel that goes into the state coffers. Then the "reclaimed" materials goes in the garbage.

Lies, damned lies, and recycling.

And we have to pretend to recycle, and they pretend to do it, and this is a Big Lie that we all conform to. Honestly, has there every been as big a lie in this country, with complicity on every level from the top of the government to the merest citizen? Recycling is an expensive and stupid failure, its fake observation enforced by power of law, and no one at any level of government will admit it and demand we stop it. 

For environmentalists, it's all about wishful thinking, control, and money. The wishful thinking is of a piece with the idea that windmills and solar panels can give us all the energy we need with no drawbacks. The control is getting a supine public into the habit of paying tributes to keep Gaia from destroying us, maybe in the hope that one day there will be a market for this contaminated crap. And money speaks for itself. So real solutions go into the landfill along with the precious bottles and cans and waste paper.

Here in the Hudson Valley, the town of New Windsor contracted in 2017 for a waste-to-energy plant with BioHighTech Global, a plant that would take something we hate (garbage) and turn it into something we love (energy). Two years later the town board got its panties in a twist and said it would impact the environment poorly, so BioHighTech pulled out of the agreement. Good job, town board; now 150,000 tons of garbage a year goes in the landfill, and your energy costs remain sky high. 

Another such project by Taylor Biomass is in the works in Montgomery, a project that has been planned for well over a decade, but it will probably have the cord yanked if Montgomery falls into the hands of Nervous Nellies who genuflect at the altar of environmentalism as well. Or if the environmentalists go after it again with lawfare. 

But they need to remember that getting rid of the project doesn't get rid of the garbage, nor does it make recycling effective. 

Teeny tiny toys?

We all want to be more charitable at Christmastime, don't we? (Just say yes and nod for now.) And Toys for Tots is without question one of America's favorite charities. Who doesn't want to give a child in need some Christmas cheer? This year you can donate a toy more easily than ever, by selecting what you would like to give and paying for it on the charity's site. No need to break quarantine! 

Or maybe you can donate even more easily... by eating chips! 

When you purchase specially marked packages of Frito-Lay snacks, you give a gift to Toys for Tots! "Give a Gift with Every Bag" it says. Which makes it sound like 1 bag = 1 toy for the cause, at least to me.

Only on the back of the bag in fine print does one discover that a purchase of a specially marked bag results in a 2.5-cent donation to Toys for Tots, capped at $500,000. My math isn't great, but I think that means they have to sell 200 million bags of chips to hit the $500,000 cap. Now, this is not as impossible as it sounds, since according to Food Insider the company (a division of Pepsi) makes 16 billion bags of snacks per year. Still, Toys for Tots doesn't even list Pepsi or Frito Lay on its Corporate Sponsors page, and no mention of this fund-raiser is found in the Frito Lay site's newsroom section. 

I'm in favor of corporate giving, but making people feel like they're really participating when they're only giving the equivalent of 2.5 cents is just stupid. They'd have to be pretty tiny toys to buy them for 2.5 cents. 

This is like my exposé of the Box Tops for Education program in 2017, when I realized that if everyone in town contributed the maximum allowed box tops (each worth a dime) to our local school system (capped at 200,000 box tops), it would fund the education of ONE STUDENT. Actually, not even one student; about 88% of one student. But I dutifully clipped the box tops for donations to our parish school, and guess what? The archdiocese closed it anyway.

The late Don Imus used to grouse that companies that wanted to make a donation should just make the damn donation, not tie it to consumer purchases or other incentives. I think he was probably right. 

I'm just tired of everything not being what it is supposed to be. Charity programs that don't help, voting machines that don't tabulate votes, reality shows that are fake, entertainment that isn't any fun, lockdowns that don't stop the spread of disease, governors who don't govern, district attorneys who turn criminals loose, churches that don't teach faith in God, an ACLU that doesn't support free speech anymore, sports leagues that produce crap sports, news media that don't report news. It's all image, no substance, or worse, substance contrary to the image. 

I'll send Toys for Tots a buck and forgo the 40 bags of snacks I would have to buy to make the same donation. Frito Lay will have to muddle through.

Cereal killahs.

I know many people were impressed by Joe Biden's harrowing tale of a confrontation in 1962 with a gangsta named Corn Pop. Back then, Mr. Biden says, he was the only white lifeguard at a city pool in Wilmington, Delaware, and after sending the disruptive Mr. Pop out of the pool, the latter promised to meet Joe with his straight razor and give him an exceptionally close shave. But Mr. Biden used his famous charm to patch things up with the gang leader, and they became pals, like Max und Moritz.

Well, I want to go on record as saying that I, too, have met my share of badasses and punks, and emerged little worse for wear.

Yo yo yo, just sit yo heinie down while I lay it all out for y'all. Your man Special Fred has gone toe-to-toe with big-timers like:

Alfa Bitts -- Saw this muthah selling smart pills outside the elementary school for a dollar. Saw they was just deer poop. Kid buys one, spits it out, says "It's poop!" Alfa says, "See? You smarter already." Was gonna bust him but he cut me in on the action.

Rice Chexxx -- Part of the Czech mob, Chexxx was one bad hombre. We crossed paths when I stole a Zenith hi-fi console from loot he already stole. His gang tied me up and was gonna cut me up. But it turned out Chexxx came from a humble family of coal miners, just like me! After we bonded over that, he not only let me keep the console, he threw in an eight-track tape player.

Apple Jack -- Ol' fart, used to walk around uptown threatening people while drinking that stuff made from apples. I took him aside one day, got to talkin', turned out he was off his crazy meds because the insurance wouldn't cover it! I said I knew some people, dig? We got him covered and strapped down with IV drugs in a VA hospital. It was a big f'n deal, yo. Then he got an infection and died.

Cracklin' Oat Brando -- Violent suckah, told me if I got in his way he'd go through me "like Sherman through Georgia, yo." I said I wouldn't run; there was no reason to get all flushed, we were all the same down deep. He admired my intestinal fortitude.

Fruity Pebbles -- Head of the Stonewallers, Fruity wanted to run me outta town. I said hey, let's get a latte and talk. We wound up going to the Halloween parade together. I got a Snickers and two Almond Joys!

Weeta Bix -- Sista was gonna pound me because she heard what I done to her sis, Weet Tina. Said I was actin' creepy, sniffin' her hair and stuff. I said hell no! And if you don't believe me, you ain't female! I woke up in the ER six hours later.

Grape Nutz -- This suckah was about to blow me away with a shotgun. So I stuck my fingers in the muzzle and it blew up in his face. Kickin' it Looney style.

Cheery O -- British underworld leader, working for Michael Steele in MI5. Tried to get me to cough up info on Russian collusion for a skimpy 20 G's. Told him kiss my leotard, man, ain't no collusion at all. He says Pip pip, whate'er, chap, I'll just make sump'in up anyway. Loser. Wonder what happened to him.

The blindness of the intelligentsia.

Today we address the latest fad from publishing, courtesy of a major journal known for its deep dives into thorny intellectual problems. I am of course referring to Esquire magazine.

"Fact Checking Is the Core of Nonfiction Writing," notes the title of the article in question. "Why Do So Many Publishers Refuse to Do It?"

Well, as someone who has done fact-checking work for more than twenty years, I can tell you one reason right off the top of my head: Publishers are cheap. Even in the heady days of 2000, when publishers had money, and the Internet hadn't started to pick off newspapers and magazines like tin monkeys in a shooting gallery, publishers were tightfisted about copyediting and fact-checking. Why? Because the production budget margins were slim, and anything that wasn't sales (advertising, special direct sales, subscriptions), fat paychecks for talent, editorial bonuses, or loaded expense accounts was overhead. We were overhead. We were speed bumps that the editors and writers hit on their way to the sunny uplands of publishing glory. We were the damp sock in the face that said "This author writes like a fourth-grader with narcolepsy" or "Everything in this piece is a lie." It was never phrased that way, but that's how it feels on the other end of the sock. Who'd want to pay for that?

But that's not what the author is driving at here. Best-selling true-crime-story peddler Emma Copley Eisenberg is asking why book publishers don't pay for fact-checking staff to make sure the books they publish are accurate.

Fact checking is a comprehensive process in which, according to the definitive book on the subject, a trained checker does the following: “Read for accuracy”; “Research the facts”; “Assess sources: people, newspapers and magazines, books, the Internet, etc”; “Check quotations”; and “Look out for and avoid plagiarism.” Though I had worked as a fact checker in two small newsrooms, did I trust myself to do the exhaustive and detailed work of checking my own nonfiction book? I did not.
      From reading up on the subject and talking to friends who had published books of nonfiction, I knew that I would be responsible for hiring and paying a freelance fact checker myself. This is the norm, not the exception; in almost all book contracts, it is the writer’s legal responsibility, not the publisher’s, to deliver a factually accurate text.
      As a result, most nonfiction books are not fact checked; if they are, it is at the author’s expense. Publishers have said for years that it would be cost-prohibitive for them to provide fact checking for every nonfiction book; they tend to speak publicly about a book’s facts only if a book includes errors that lead to a public scandal and threaten their bottom line. Recent controversies over books containing factual errors by Jill Abramson, Naomi Wolf, and, further back, James Frey, come to mind.

I'm willing to take her question at face value here. The main reason that publishers don't want to fact-check -- and neither do authors -- is it means less money for everybody else. She says that for one her books she had thousands of pages of documents and hours of transcripts. I am not questioning her work ethic at all. I am saying that it would take the fact-checker about the same amount of time to go over all this information, even if it were well organized (which most writers are not), so what does she expect them to be paid? The starvation wage for such work is $20 an hour, so you're looking at possibly $20,000 at least if you want such research checked. That's all going to come out of sales, and thus out of the writer's pay. How many of them would sign on for that, especially writers who are more confident about their research?

Unbelievably, Eisenberg was able to get someone to do one of her books for just twelve grand, for which she paid herself out of pocket. I credit her for the willingness to do that rather than face fire or possibly lawsuits for getting the facts wrong. And she was lucky to get a good fact-checker; elsewhere the article cites the story of a writer who hired a freelance fact-checker that was not so good, and introduced more errors into the work. Not many people really have experience in the field, you know, and those that claim to often have worked for biased publications or celebrity outfits that just want a rubber stamp on what they publish.

Then there's this thought:

But the reason why the publishing industry has been slow to implement such guidelines for fact checking may lie further down in the foundation of the whole system. Without widespread consumer awareness that most books are not fact checked, or about which imprints publish which books, there’s no real reason for publishers to care about fact checking. If it comes to light that a book contains major errors, it’s the author, not the publisher, whose reputation takes the hit.

She's right about that, but doesn't make the case why the publisher should care. I've done a lot of work for a publisher that will put almost anything labeled nonfiction in print, all kinds of stuff, and they really and honestly don't care if it's truthful. Why should they? No one's going to say, "This book on the Reptilian Conspiracy leaves out crucial data! I'll never buy a book from Knucklehead Press again!" No, they'll say, "Joe Bloe's book on the Reptilian Conspiracy is a waste of time! Don't buy it!" And if the sales are lousy, the editors at Knucklehead won't bother to contract Mr. Bloe for more books. It's still cheaper than having a big fund for fact-checking and lawyers that doesn't come out of author's royalties. But Eisenberg, who I suppose as a reporter is studious about facts, seems to think publishers can pay for this out of the unicorn golden fart fund, because the Internet has demolished the book publishing industry pretty well, and most books lose money.

The person who brought this story to my attention -- you probably guessed I'm not an Esquire reader -- was fuming because publishers ought to pay! for fact-checking, to stop the spread of fake news! I'd like to know whose fake news was intended by that statement. The healthcare pros who said we couldn't visit Grandpa's deathbed but it was okay to mob the streets for a protest? The fact-checkers at Rolling Stone who gave a thumbs-up to the Duke Lacrosse story? The sharp-eyed researchers at CNN who approved the "fiery but mostly peaceful" reportage?

NB: This is fake but accurate.

For some reason, the same people who ask "Who watches the watchmen?" about the police are completely willing to trust reporters and fact-checkers, as if they don't have their own biases and prejudices. Or, more likely, they know they have biases and prejudices, but they're the "right kind." Which is how I've gotten in trouble over the years for my fact-checking work.

One last point, and this may be the most important point: Insane or not, con artist or not, the book author will almost certainly know more about his subject than the fact-checker will, but the fact-checker can only go by accepted wisdom. So in cases where the book goes against conventional wisdom, the fact-checker would red-pencil everything until the publisher has no choice but to pay a kill fee and cancel the project. What does this mean? Surely half the diet and nutrition books peddled to the lay audience would never see the light of day. And no book questioning orthodoxy on global warming, sexual identity, or the sanctity of certain politicians would ever get to galley stage. What would be next? Books arguing against Keynesian economics, the 1619 Project, abortion and euthanasia, and whatever else is a "protected subject" would never be published. Many people in the business, almost left-wingers all, might say "So what?" Here's what: Other books under the don't-question-orthodoxy rule would include Darwin's On the Origin of Species, Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri vi, Pasteur's The Germ Theory and Its Applications to Medicine and Surgery, and Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. In other words, if I de-platform (as the kiddies say) the cranks and the crooks because they disagree with mainstream opinion, I'm likely to kill the truth as collateral damage. Better to publish them all and let the truth work its way forward. 

Whatever it is, I'm against it.

I don't know what they have to say
It doesn't matter anyway
Whatever it is, I'm against it
No matter what it is or who commenced it
I'm against it

Your proposition may be good
But let's have one thing understood
Whatever it is, I'm against it
And even when you've changed it or condensed it
I'm against it

I'm opposed to it on general principles
I'm opposed to it...

The great Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff of Huxley College set the tone for my acceptance of anything in the media. Speaking as one who has long labored in the mines of book and magazine publishing, I have seen many silly ideas turn into fads and turn into "musts," for the simple reason that some ding dong had some encounter with a freak out there in the world who had some life-improving idea; with the enthusiasm that only the young and over-moneyed can enjoy, that ding dong sold her friends on it, and through the media it was broadcast to the world. This is how we get useless things like cucumber slices on the eyes and dangerous things like Goop. A few years down the line, when all America is enthralled with the dopey idea, the original true believers say "What was that all about?" as if they'd never been involved, because they're on to the next fabulous idea. The consumer can never catch up; you're always going to be at least one dumb idea behind.

This kind of stuff is big in newspaper features and women's magazines. You may find dumb ideas in Popular Mechanics or Family Handyman, but they aren't touted breathlessly as the best thing EVAH. Well, not usually.

So here are some things I'm against, possibly on general principles, but also because I think it's dumb and I don't feel like it. I'm not saying these things have no merits, but as modern Big Ideas they leave me cold. I've spent my whole life resisting peer pressure and I'm not giving in now.

YOGA
It is probably is healthy, and maybe it helps you relax, but it's not for me. I would look like an olive trying to balance on its toothpick. Everyone on the health-care commercials is yogaing away, but of course only a small percentage of the population is really interested. Most of us would just like to be less fat. We are perfectly happy to find inner peace in church and/or lying on the sofa. If you want a reason to avoid yoga, call it cultural appropriation. I don't care. Just leave me out of it.

VEGANISM
A doctor may force me into it one day, but it will be to save my life, not the cow's life. It's unlikely to happen anyhow. There're few health conditions that absolutely require abstaining from all animal products. Despite that, the news media and our betters in the international health community and the global warming gang want me to give them up. Well, I can be sentimental about animals enough to try to give up meat one day, although fish and chickens are dumb and probably need to be eaten. In any event, you'll get my ice cream when you pry it from my literally cold and possibly dead hands.

ELECTRIC CARS
I have nothing against the idea, but the technology isn't there. This little fact was buried for years after the so-called documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? came out in 2006. You want to know what killed the electric car? Reality. People have the idea that you can charge a huge battery by zapping it with the Heart of Atlantis, but that's horse hockey. A pal of mine got a call on the way to work recently from his boss, who was stuck on an exit ramp when he forgot to charge his Tesla. He was driving through New Jersey and the thing turned into a two-ton paperweight. My pal had to come babysit the car, and the Labrador in the backseat, while Boss took the company truck and went to work. Because you can't send someone to Sunoco for a gallon of electricity. I've thought a network of battery changers would be useful, but at this point you can't just pop out the old batteries and pop in the new ones. Maybe one day -- and maybe one day our electricity will come from nice, clean nukes or maybe unicorn farts instead of fossil fuels -- but that day isn't today. So the Tesla runs on fossil fuels and nukes anyway. So shut up and let me drive my car.

BEST-SELLERS BY CHARLATANS AND AGONISTS
Nothing is going to stop the liars, cheaters, carpetbaggers, chiselers, swindlers, faddists, and snake-oilers from publishing books full of lies, like some recent best-sellers I know of; it has been thus and ever shall be. But don't tell me to -- nay, insist that I must -- read them. Furthermore, I have no interest in the agonists, meaning writers who pack their novels with horrible tales of woe meant to show how the badass female lead (always female) overcomes all the terrible strawmen (always men) who stand in her way. I guess there's an audience for this stuff, which is paint-by-numbers no matter what the setting, but I'm not part of it. The people who are ought to realize that they're being fed an illusion as much as any Hallmark Christmas movie watcher. The difference is, the Hallmark fan knows it's fiction.

These are the bridges that are too far for me. And if you don't like my general principles... Well, to quote Prof. Wagstaff's twin brother, or someone who sounded like him, these are my principles, and if you don't like them, I have others.

Got your tongue?

A cat-loving friend of mine likes to say, "If cats could talk, they would lie to you."

Honesty vs. manners.

When I returned to work after my mother's death, a kindly coworker -- the first I saw that morning -- asked how I was doing.

"Lousy," I snapped. 

That was a long time ago, and I've regretted my honesty at that moment ever since.

We have an authenticity issue in our culture, but this is nothing new. As long as people have realized they could make stuff up and mask their thoughts we have known that people can lie. Even the animal kingdom is full of lies, camouflage, and duplicity. Toddlers come up with whoppers. All part of the human condition. 

But in the postwar years we got sick of politeness and manners that masked bad intent. That's fine with me; we would like our villains to be obvious and clear even though we don't wish to be ourselves. In the rush, though, to clear off phoniness, generations of Holden Caulfields wanted to throw out politeness entirely, to erase manners, to get through to the truth.   

To rip off the mask.

This has not worked well.

First of all, it is never a good idea to lose manners. Second, we don't really want as much honesty as we think we do. Finally, getting rid of good manners, we discover, does not even really lead to authenticity after all.

For a long time manners have been seen as foolish and artificial. Ron Barrett's comic strip Politenessman spent years showing manners as the enemy of intelligence -- although my experience and probably yours do not tell us that the stupider people are the more polite they are. Comedies of manners have a long history in our culture, making a lot of hay out of the artifice of manners. But if manners are unnatural, it is in the same way that steel and farms and music and performing arts are unnatural -- they don't exist in nature but we need them for civilization.

I think most of us with a little perspective see the value of manners. As Dave Foley's character Troy said in Blast from the Past, "[G]ood manners are just a way of showing other people we have respect for them. See, I didn't know that. I thought it was just a way of acting all superior." Manners have been taken for snobbery, for hiding ill will, for a means of lying, and indeed can be used for these things. But what they are mostly is the sign of respect we owe one another, which functions as the oil in the social machine. Maybe you'll get more honesty with no manners, but the respect wears away quickly and the machine breaks down anyhow.

As for the next issue -- how much honesty do we want? When someone asks you how you are doing, do you or this other person really want to talk about your bunions, your hemorrhoids, your large electric bill, your kid's shoplifting, your other kid's drinking, your shoddy brake pads, your sinus infection, your anxiety over the side effects of Cialis? I'm thinking probably not. Manners give us pleasant, general answers that can be used to indicate that things are not 100% swell but are okay. Which is also important, because the embarrassing examples I give are pretty common, but if they happened to me, I could not consider them proof that I had the worst life of anyone in the world. Manners can give us perspective and allow for gratitude.

Finally, I argue that trying to express your real, possibly miserable self also may lead to just more phoniness. Why? I know people who enjoy -- and I do mean enjoy -- a reputation for being grumpy or mean. (I was like that in college, for a while.) What do guys like that do when they're having a good day? Ruin the reputation? No, they hide their happiness under grouchiness, they act mean even when their hearts aren't in it. The "truth" has just become another mask.

So, by throwing away good manners we gain very little and we lose social cohesion. We can probably all agree that there's very little social cohesion about these days, and little to find good about that. Letting our terrible selfish insides out has not turned out to be the truth that sets us free, but rather just makes us enemies of one another some more.

I am at least trying to ask for the salt rather than grabbing for it. You have to start somewhere.

Liars!

Writers are liars.

I'm not talking about those who write for newspapers and news sites; we know they are liars, with their slanted news and fake news and all. For the most part they've marinated in their own biases so long that they can't even understand an argument being made against them, can't even see how they treat identical subjects differently depending on what it says about their "side." American news is not only disgraceful, it's boring, which is unbelievable. If you're going to lie, shouldn't you at least give us entertaining whoppers?

But today I'm actually talking about writers of fiction, who like to think of themselves as Shelley's "unacknowledged legislators of the world," rather than the untruthful jerks that they are.

"But," you say (putting words in others' mouths being a favorite pastime of writers), "isn't that part of the job description? Fiction means untruth, and they're writers of fiction."

"Ha!" I reply, putting a word in my own mouth for a change. I go on to explain that this is the cute, furry gremlin that they disguise themselves as when you show them for the liars they are. "Oh, we're just harmless entertainers!" Then when you accept that they are just tellers of tales and spinners of stories, they knife you and the rest of society in the back.

How do they do it? Mainly by presenting the world as they want it to look rather than what objective truth tells them it is. Suppose you're a dyspeptic misogynist who blames all his problems on women. You write a novel in which all the female characters are cunning, vicious, or stupid, and present that as the realistic basis against which your made-up story is presented. Nowadays a Kingsley Amis or Norman Mailer would probably get a tersely worded e-mail from an editor based on his treatment of female characters, at least, and might get his contract voided.

But man-hating women, white-hating minorities, and Christian-hating atheists are thoroughly encouraged to lie in this fashion. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is being celebrated as never before, and it seems clear to me that all the information she ever got about Christian living comes from her fevered imagination and the New York Times. And the editorial page, at that. But it is presented as a portrait of American Christianity run free, intended to make the reader hate and revile a segment of the population and culture. Of course it won every award her fellow writers could throw at it.

Sometimes lies told to present a false view of the world are fairly toothless. The middle-aged writer who has his lead character (often a middle-aged writer) get involved in an exciting story with amazing sex in it (looking at you, Peter Benchley) is just having fun. A writer who is an alcoholic usually comes up with characters along the way who drink alcoholically and yet remain functional and popular, unlike actual alcoholics. Wishful thinking isn't too dangerous. Crusades meant to hector your fellow man are.

Here's a small sample of famous writers who just made crap up to fit their agenda and presented it as storytelling in service of truth:

Parson Weems -- It's not so much that he made up a hagiography about Washington that irritates me, it's that he lied about it to teach children not to lie. "Here's a lie to teach you to tell the truth, like George Washington never said he had to do!" Maybe that explains some subsequent presidents' behavior.

Upton Sinclair -- Never mind his fiction writing; he was prepared to whitewash Sacco and Vanzetti even though he believed they were killers, just because he and his readers supported the killers' politics. He turned his lies into a novel called Boston. 

John Steinbeck -- Travels with Charley was supposed to be a nonfictional break for the fiction writer, but he probably made most of it up. More important, his famous Grapes of Wrath is largely a load of crap presented as a fictionalized version of the gritty truth.

A fiction writer who feels he has a mission tells his readers "Here is the world as it is" (he may say "as I see it" instead, but that's just for cover) and if he willfully distorts the facts, he is a liar. Writers as diverse as Wodehouse or Asimov or Christie invariably say something about the human condition, being humans (albeit ones with superhuman prolificacy), but they weren't selling their books as mirrors of the real world, so they are not liars. It's a fine line but easy to see when you know where to look.

How do lying writers get away with it? Mainly by feeding falsehoods to a ready audience. Upton Sinclair actually claimed to be afraid of what would happen to him if he told the truth about the Sacco and Vanzetti case, that his fans who supported the killers would take it out on him. As it was, his book did not claim the killers were definitely innocent, and he caught grief for it. I'm sure he trembled all the way to the bank.

I'm through with writers who willfully mislead the public. You may call it literature; I call it bunk.

Least enthusiastic endorsement.

I really don't think that either of the major candidates for president of the United States deserve to run for mayor of a small and insignificant town, but a vote for one is a vote against the other, so there's at least some consolation in that.

I'm not going to tell you who to vote for, but I will tell you some of the criteria I use in my decision. Bear in mind, if you're not happy about it, that I'm not happy about it either.

1) Competence. Both these candidates have shown public incompetence in their careers, but only one has resulted in massive bloodshed. So far. And only one has, for personal reasons, allowed classified information to fall into the hands of foreign and likely antagonistic governments. So far.

2) Respect. One candidate shows women a revolting lack of respect. The other counts on women for support, but evened the field by marrying a creep who shows women a revolting lack of respect. (On a more personal note: One campaign may give nothing but lip service to the concerns of us Catholics, but the other is positively antipathetic toward us.)

3) Middle class values. Both candidates have shown contempt for the values of the middle class, but one founded a campaign on the economic concerns of the middle class*. It is my belief that the existence of a thriving middle class is the #1 bulwark against tyranny in any society. Otherwise you get nothing but a small cadre at the top and a vast, terrified, helpless, economically dependent mass at the bottom. Voting the candidate who pledges to help the financial concerns of the middle class does not make us greedy or shallow; it is what keeps a small group from controlling everything else. There is no freedom without economic freedom.

4) Media. Having spent a great deal of my career in print media, I can tell you that my experience is these people are quite antagonistic to the reasonable desires and heartfelt beliefs of the bulk of Americans. A vote against what they like is a vote for everything that is decent in the world.

These people are no smarter than you, but every single one of them thinks that he is. A metaphoric punch in the nose is just what they need.

So those are my thoughts, and while I've never wanted to vote less in an election, I am obliged to do what I can to vote against the worse candidate.

*Even those who hate him can give us some idea of what the Trump campaign is about. What's Hillary's campaign about besides her greatness and people coming together because together people have togetherness?